Monday, May 9, 2016

The Woman in Gender’s No Man’s Land - Part II

Makeshift families are vital for transgender people
in a society that constantly belittles them.
Stereotypes are perpetuated from all corners, including the film
industries. Transgender women are alternately portrayed usually as murderous
deviants or buffoons. A 2015 Tamil movie ‘I’ caught flak with transgender
groups for portraying a transgender woman as a villainous shrew who constantly
violates the personal space of the hero.

When I ask Kalki, what the biggest misconceptions
about her community are, she wryly asks me to list some of them. I trip over my
own words, hoping not to offend her. I tell her a lot of people fear the
eunuchs who come begging. She listens to me patiently. She then asks me to
define a eunuch. I then immediately reel out my definitions of a eunuch,
transgender and transvestite. I begin to realise that I sound more and more
ignorant.

She corrects me on my etymology. “Eunuch is a
derogatory word for a transgender. Transgender is an umbrella term which
encompasses transgenders, transsexuals and transvestites. Those people who are
begging are also usually transgenders.”

In our culture
the image of most transgenders as eunuchs is constantly invoked. It both
reinforces the idea that they are missing an appendage and that any of us could
get forcefully converted. Moreover, few of us stop to think about the violence
that is perpetuated towards transgenders through language. In southern India,
transgenders are derogatorily referred to as ombothu (nine). While no one is sure about its origins, there are
some indications that it is because the number’s symbol can be flipped either
way; a cleverly cruel insult for people who switch their biological sex or
gender.

In the north, the term most commonly used for this
community is hijra (eunuch). This has a basis in our cultural history. In
ancient India, castrated men used to stand guard for women of royal households;
ensuring they would not force themselves on the princesses.

Things are obviously different in 21st
century India. However, most Indians still look at identifying with a third
gender as a choice made under duress rather than something that emerges
naturally.

The transgender community is still the source of
numerous boogeyman tales. Little children are fed with tales of transgenders
stealing boys and castrating them for nefarious purposes. Kalki says that in her entire activism
career, she has come across only one boy who was castrated. Thejaswin prods her
a little about the case. His short film script concerns a young boy who is
castrated and then sold into prostitution.
He tells her that the film aims to be hopeful, focusing not on the
ordeal the boy has been through but his resolute nature. Kalki scoffs at this
idea. “I’m sorry but the transcommunity will not support such an idea. One of
the things that we are trying to do as activists is convince people that we
don’t kidnap children and castrate people for sex work.”

Still prostitution is rampant in the community since
economic opportunities are limited. Yet, prominent transgender activist A.
Revathi explains in her biography that sex work for transgender women like her
was not merely about eking a living but also about fulfilling sexual desires.
Kalki has many friends who dabbled in sex work to earn money for their sex
reassignment surgery and then returned to more respectable professions.

Thejaswin tries to engage her with his script’s
castrated protagonist. She listens patiently and explains that in a scenario,
the boy would still be a male, even if his development faculties may differ.
“It’s like losing a leg. It’s tragic but life still goes on. He might be able
to impersonate the other gender for a while but it’s an act of survival. It
isn’t his identity.”

While Kalki describes herself as soft spoken, she
has little patience for those who discriminate against transgenders. She rails
against those who sympathetically declare transgenders, nature’s mistake.
“Being a transgender person is natural. Looking at it as nature’s mistake is a
mistake.” She has a special vitriol for the melodramatic poems that are
commonly published in Tamil magazines by cisgender authors. The poems pity
transgenders for being born the way they are.
“We don’t need sympathy” she snaps.
“We are happy with who we are.”

She uses poetry as her mode of retaliation. An
upcoming lyricist in the Tamil film industry who worked in a few prominent
films had a crush on her. Unfortunately, he kept asking her extremely personal
questions about her body. She fishes out a notebook from one of her rooms. The
poem titled Mun Kurippu seesa man constantly posing questions to a transwoman. Are your breasts real? Are your genitals
real? Are you really a woman? The woman keeps answering yes to each one of
them. The poem ends with the transwoman posing a question to the man. Are you really a man?

The poem was posted on Kalki’s Facebook account and
created a minor storm. Even a few transgenders questioned Kalki, asking her
what was wrong if someone had questions. After all, she could have sensitised
him. However Kalki retorted, “Would he have the guts to ask such a question to
a biological woman?”

This dehumanisation is something Kalki and her
friends have to put up with on a daily basis. Once, a group of them entered a
photo studio and were met with snickers by one of the attendants. One of
Kalki’s friends unleashed a tirade of profanities against the young woman in
front of the entire staff and customers. The attendant didn’t utter another
word.

She still maintains though that Tamil Nadu is a more
accepting place for transgenders especially compared to states like Kerala.
Kalki who has been to the latter state several times describes it as utterly
transphobic and homophobic. She remembers one instance just a day after she had
given an interview with Malayalam Manorama, the state’s largest circulating
daily. At a train station, on her way to Kumaragaon, Kalki and her friends found
themselves being stared at by almost three hundred men. Many of them also
passed crude comments in front of them in Malayalam. “It’s so horrible the way men treat
transgenders there. It’s completely vulgar and this is a state that claims to
have 100% literacy. It makes you question what education is.” She laughs
impishly and declares only half-jokingly “I think people there are sexually
oppressed. I wouldn’t be surprised if masturbation was illegal there!”

**************************

Ironically, the same discrimination that alienates
Kalki from mainstream society insulates her from societal norms. Kalki lives a
free and independent life in Auroville. She is free to smoke, drink, date guys
and dress as she pleases.

Kalki explains that transgenders enjoy greater
independence compared to biological women because they navigate gender roles. “We
are actually fighting to be put into a box, even at the cost of losing our
individuality and freedom.” Some of these cultural expectations are placed on
Kalki by her mother. “It is impossible for me. She expects me to act the same
way like my sisters; do household work, wear traditional clothes and no makeup.
She expects me to be a typical Tamil girl and I can’t do that.”

“If I wanted
to live, date or sleep around with a guy I can do it. I can also tell him to
get lost. If a biological woman does that she is labelled a prostitute. A woman
rarely sets foot into a Tasmac (one of
the thousand government liquor stores across the state of Tamil Nadu) but
transgender women drink and smoke. If we dress flamboyantly, we are just
expressing ourselves. We are the only women in the country who enjoy our
womanhood.”

What Kalki says might be a broad generalisation but
there’s an inkling of truth to what she says. Most women in India are still
constrained by ugly noose of patriarchy. Kalki minces no words. “Women in
Indian society are still treated as subhuman. Women may be an accepted sex but
they pay a price for it. When they are young, they listen to their father. Then
they get married, they have to listen to their husband. She has to sacrifice
her life for her babies and keep the honour of the family intact. She doesn’t
have the freedom to be herself. She doesn’t have the freedom to say no to her
husband, even if he wants sex.”

Kalki also has to deal with another unsavoury part of
being a woman in India; being stalked by men. “It’s always married men who are
frustrated with their sex lives. Sometimes I am followed for miles. I usually
stop and ask them what they want. Sometimes they want to take a picture of me.
Sometimes they want to ask me out.”

Kalki says the experience sometimes make her feel it
was better off being a man. She is a fan of night bike rides but can’t usually
join her male friends who fear for her safety. Kalki emphasises however that
any moment of bemoaning has to do with her freedom. “Just because I change my
gender, I become a victim of all these cultural norms. Even among the
transgender community, there are certain stereotypes about knowing how to cook,
draping a sari or indulging in vices. I know what I want and I know that I am a
woman. Luckily I was not biologically born a woman, otherwise I would have been
married off to a man and my life would revolve around staying at home cooking
food and watching television.”

Kalki and her friends have on occasion tried to give
women a taste of the kind of social life that is usually denied to them. In
2012, she and a couple of friends ushered in the new year at a beach house in
Chennai which was attended by over forty women from a nearby fishing slum.
Kalki, already good friends with most of the woman, was frequently invited for
their family events and was glad to return the favour. The soirée had copious
amounts of food, beer and cigarettes.
Kuthu songs (a popular folk music genre in the Tamil music industry)
blared from the radio behind closed doors. All the women let their hair down;
dancing for several hours. Some of them tasted beer for the first time. As
Kalki describes it, “They were living life for the first time. Although, we
made sure they didn’t drink too much. We didn’t want them to go home drunk!”

That festive experience was a game-changer for Kalki,
who for long had placed psychological barriers between her and biological
women. “I realised women are not
different from us. It’s just that we transwomen have the freedom. It was a
wakeup call for most of us because we wanted to be like these women; get
married, have a husband and kids; but on
the other side, they wanted to be like us. That day we realised we just have to
be ourselves.”

**************************

Kalki has kept up her promise to her parents. Her
heavy involvement with transgender rights has seen her become one of its most
prominent spokesperson for the community in India. She is regularly invited for
sensitisation programmes by schools, colleges and corporates. Schools are her
favourite. School students stand around talking to her long after her seminar.
They also treat her like a celebrity and she is inundated with autograph
requests. Many of them add her on Facebook. “Children are amazing” she says
with a glint in her eyes. “They are so open minded at that age and immediately
accepting. They also come up with the most insightful questions. Positively
influencing the mindset of a new generation is the noblest thing one can do.”
Kalki is writing a guide book for teachers to support gender confused children.
She also has plans of creating a comic book about the issue and distributing it
among children.

Kalki has also presented the community’s problems to
judicial academies, high courts, district courts, states legal rights
authorities and even the Supreme Court. In 2010, she was an official guest of
the United States government. Over three weeks, she visited federal offices in
Washington DC, New York and Salt Lake City that were working on minority
issues. She also visited Amnesty International, New York Commission for Human
Rights and the United Nations. She says the level of commitment she saw towards
gender rights inspired her to work even harder on her activism.

However, she is disillusioned by the fact that only
NGOs involved in sexual health projects are able to raise funds in India. Legal
rights and awareness are rarely seen as priorities by international donor
agencies like USAID and World Bank. Kalki has strong words to say about this.
“In one way all the money that comes in for these sexual health projects is
just hedging prostitution. I’m not denigrating sex workers but they should give
more funds towards creating awareness and viable economic opportunities. If we
got any legal victories in India, it’s not because of the NGOs but because of
the people on the street who raise their voices.”

Kalki played an instrumental role in the judicial
process that led to the Supreme Court’s landmark 2014 judgement on
transgenders, which legally declared them a third gender. This ruling may seem anathematic
to transgenders in Western countries who fight to be included in a gender
binary system but in India, transgenders have always considered themselves distinct.In
ancient India they were referred to as Trithiya Prakirthi, which
loosely translates to ‘third type’.

In 2010, the Tamil Nadu State Judicial Academy, the
Social Reformatory along with the Madras High Court invited Kalki and her
friend Priya Babu to give a seminar on transgender issues. Dignitaries like
Altamas Kabir, the then Supreme court Chief Justice and other prominent
justices like IK Iqbal and P. Sathasivam were in attendance. Kalki and Priya’s
presentation was a wake-up call to the judges who for the first time were
confronted with the problems of the community.

A year later in Delhi, they presented yet again at a
national seminar by the National Legal Services Authority and United Nations
Development Programme. The programme was well represented by the judiciary
across India. In 2012, NALSA (National Legal Services Authority of India) filed
a public interest litigation against transgender discrimination. After much
deliberation, the judges agreed. On April 15, it was legally ruled that
provisions should be made by all government and private bodies for a third
gender.

Kalki has a more tempered take on the verdict. She
rues that the verdict barely addresses transgender men. “Also, this
legalisation has arrived after almost 150 years of British era laws. This is
just a step towards acknowledging us as human beings. There is a long way to go
with regards to social reforms. Transgenders need to be accepted into families
first.”

There is a small lull in the conversation and
Thejaswin uses the opportunity to steer the conversation back to his film
script. He explains how the movie indicts the mainstream community rather the
transgender community. He talks about a notorious doctor in Bombay who
castrated several boys for a kidnapping ring. She nods silently while taking a
drink of water. “There’s a strong film to be made but it really depends on the
presentation. I’m fine as long as it doesn’t perpetuate the same old
transcommunity stereotypes.”

“How about changing the story to a boy dealing with
gender issues in a conservative household?” I say. My helpful suggestion is
immediately shot down by both Thejaswin and Kalki, who say it’ll change the
whole script. I shut up immediately.

Kalki declares that the best way to bring
transgender issues into the mainstream is to make a positive transgender
character an integral part of a commercial movie. “Most movies rely on men
dressing up like women for comedy. It’s horrible.” I bring up Dallas Buyer’s
Club which won Jared Leto an Oscar. She hasn’t heard about it but she is
pleased to hear that he won an award for playing a transgender woman.

Kalki is no stranger to films. She played the lead
role in Narthaki. The 2011 Tamil movie is a bildungsroman about a young
transgender being kicked out of his home, turning to prostitution in Mumbai and
finally becoming a Bharatnatyam dancer in Thanjavur. While Kalki admits the movie is technically
lacklustre, she stands by its content. “The screenplay is very strong. The
music by G.V Prakash is also lovely.” The movie received several accolades,
including ‘Best Social Message’ award at the Norway Film Festival. Kalki admits
while she’s thrilled about the movie’s success, she’s a little tired about
people assuming that the film is autobiographical. “Almost none of it is based
on my life” she smiles.

**************************

We then move on to the topic of love. Kalki
enunciates love in the flighty manner you would expect a Jane Austen heroine to.
Kalki and Priya always spend several hours discussing the nature of love, which
is complicated as it is even for cisgenders. “My first love was the most
exciting thing in my life. When you have transitioned and someone is attracted
to you, it’s an acknowledgement that you really are a woman. It’s so
psychologically satisfying.”

However she believes many men break up with
transgender women due to societal pressure, in the process giving up a
relationship that makes them extremely fulfilled. She bursts out an old Tamil saying that
roughly translates to “A man may leave the woman, but he will never quit her.”

Kalki emphasises that a transwoman’s love for a man
doesn’t come with tags. “A transgender relationship is very intense. The love
is not about marriage or commitment. With a biological woman you marry her,
you’re marrying the family. A transgender woman’s love is not shared with the family.”

Kalki has been luckier in her love life than many
friends. One of her friends, a transman, fell in love with a girl. The pair
wanted to run away together but his family forced him to marry a man. He was
later raped and impregnated by his husband. With no choice he ran away to
Bangalore and moved into prostitution to make ends meet. Kalki’s voice falls to
a whisper when discussing him. “He contracted AIDS and died a few years later.
It was horrible.”

All the transgender experiences of romances,
heartbreak and unfulfilled desire inspired her to start an international
project on the love stories of transgender women around the world. She’s also
writing a film script for an action drama with romance that has a transgender lead.
“All the things you read about transgenders in the media – books, films, it’s
all the perspective of your world. It’s about what you think about us” she
pointedly tells the two of us. “But what we think about and what we feel, that
has not been documented much and that can be documented only by us.”

She then
tells us we’ll go for lunch. We’ve barely looked at the clock and it’s 3 p.m.
already!

*************************

We change locations and go to Secret Garden, a
restaurant run a close friend of Kalki’s. We order a few different items but
Kalki recommends the chicken curry with rice. The conversation continues in
full swing over savoury morsels of rice and gravy.

Today Kalki leads a fulfilled life. She is finally
secure in her gender identity. “It’s not a choice. It’s me. I’ve never
regretted my transition.” She has also finally found acceptance among her
extended family. “I’m the darling of the
family. Today, I am living an independent life because my parents supported me
with education. Unfortunately many transgenders do not have that support. They
are chased out of their homes. They are very vulnerable. They get raped, get
infected with HIV or even killed. We need to change that.”

She recounts the painful tale of a one of her
closest friends Somya. The spirited woman was akin to a sister for Kalki.
However, even as a proud transgender woman, her problems got the better of her.
In December 2010, she hung herself. Kalki was devastated. As a tribute to her
she made a ten minute film. The eponymous short was based on footage Kalki had
shot of her friend with a handicam. She admits the sound quality wasn’t great
but the movie won a lot of hearts. It was screened at the Bangalore Film
Festival and was shared over six hundred times on Facebook. “There’s no acting
in it. It’s just footage of someone who was truly alive” she says.

After hours of deconstructing her life, Kalki finally
asks us questions. Interview subjects are not always curious about their
interviewers but Kalki displays an endearing interest in our lives. She teases
out of us our likes and ambitions with a warm smile, never betraying whether
she thinks of us as bland or impressive.

We say our
goodbyes. It’s time for the long haul back. As Kalki gets on to her scooter and
zooms off in the distance, it conjures up images from popular television advertisements
in my head. Modern India’s Elysian ideals of a liberated woman. Oh what a journey it took to get there.